


immolation

by aurrie



Series: all the galaxy's a stage [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, crossposted from tumblr, post umbara got me like. ow, theron's morbid curiosity gets the better of him, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25365136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurrie/pseuds/aurrie
Summary: immolate (v) -  to kill as a sacrificial victim, as by fire; offer in sacrifice.
Relationships: Theron Shan/Male Sith Warrior
Series: all the galaxy's a stage [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787530
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	immolation

There's a notification that pings on Theron's dashboard. It's a motion sensor still connected to his apartment on Odessen, one of the nicest ones and spacious ones; perks of being part of the inner circle of the Alliance.

Since the threat of the Zakuulan Empire had ended just over a year ago now and the Fleet had been dismantled and scrapped for part, they’d started a renewed effort into fully developing the residential area in earnest, giving the members of the Alliance somewhere more permanent to stay, for those who wanted to set down roots instead of being kept stuffed into bunks within the base, and for the ones with families they’d brought over with them, or even started while they were here. The Alliance and Odessen, to them, he guessed, had become more home than the Republic or Empire had been to the people who left their respective factions. It’d become more than just a cause - it had become a people, too. That had become sort of a little city in its own right nestled in the hills of Odessen’s old wilderness.

There, he’d had a taste of domesticity outside of the whirlwind that his life had been (even more than before) since the old Emperor made a comeback. _Home._ If someone had told his past self that he’d been going steady with the ex-Wrath that he’d met on Manaan all those years ago, long enough to seriously contemplate if he wanted to propose to him, he might’ve called them delusional.

Correction - it _used_ to be home. To him, and Ry. His partner. 

_Was..._ his partner.

He regretted bugging the kitchen the moment he did it. Because that's Ry's usual haunt if Theron isn't around. 

And he isn't.

He didn’t dare have anything more than the implant system that checked his vitals working now, everything else regarding his implants had to be blown out in case Gemini 16 was able to hack them somehow, but his shuttle’s computer still has a connection to the bug. He’s tempting fate, he knows he shouldn’t do this, but he loads it anyway.

Static resolves itself into the image of… him. Theron swallows. Still in the armor he wore on Umbara, covered in dirt and scrapes, hours after. He couldn’t have been back planetside for longer than a few minutes after getting back, they’d got a dispatch to them a few hours after they were stranded and taken straight back to Odessen, no detours. He’d watched him tumble out of the train with Lana, and his heart lurching in those few seconds that stretched into infinity, desperately praying they made it out before their carriage collided into the cliff-face of the rugged terrain.

Ry walks in, and takes his helmet off, placing it gingerly on the counter top. Right by it, there’s a long cooled mug of caf, a cheerful tacky ceramic of that Ry had gifted Theron as a joke, judiciously picked with some help from Vette. It had a crude drawing of a bird with a fauxhawk styled hair, almost exactly how he did his own, except it was much taller and exaggerated.

Ry looks… Theron doesn’t know how he looks. His face is unreadable, even as Theron strains to make out his expression, it’s as if he’d never taken the helmet off.

He inhales and exhales, cradling the mug, and though the feed is grainy Theron can see the rise and fall of his chest and hear the breaths he takes. He walks to the wall and stops. In, out. In, out.

Pause. 

It shatters in his hands, and he _screams._

There's the sound of durasteel crumpling as his fist makes contact with the wall, the reverberation of the room making his camera feed shake and fizzle out, and the audio crackles with distortion - the video’s gone, but the sound still works, if a little tinny, his computer automatically adjusting to lower the levels and normalise the feed. He should turn it off right now, cut the feed, stop before he can hear anymore. 

But he just keeps listening. He can’t make himself stop.

There's a clatter of pots and pans and trays and cutlery all being thrown to the ground, crockery and glassware shattering. An agonising fifteen seconds pass before it ends. 

And finally, silence. It might be the longest in his life. Then the sound of something heavier, more like heavy armor hitting the floor. And a long pregnant pause after that. 

A low grade buzz of the electronics in the room and the lights undercurrents the quiet even with the sensitivity mic adjusted to avoid picking up those frequencies. It might just be his own hearing, hypersensitive to noise hours after Umbara; the blaster fire, the train’s grav rail sputtering out with the detonation, the screech of durasteel, his own heartbeat pounding furiously in his ears rabbit-quick the whole time. But his hands were steady then. Steady enough to train the barrel right at him and make sure the shots didn’t land on Ry. 

They’re shaking now, tight-fisted white-knuckled grip on the ship’s wheel. Theron can't stand complete silence. He’s never been able to. But this is just as bad. It's worse.

And then.

A gasp. A choked sob.

That’s finally enough. Theron doesn't have the heart to listen to any more of this. He shuts off the feed and puts his head in his hands. Suddenly he's heaving in the chair, doubled over and wracked with wildfire guilt and pain spreading in his chest, and the conflagration greedily devours him, the flames licking at his chest, stealing the air from his lungs and robbing him of breath. It’s become an inferno. He can’t do this.

But he already has. The damage is done. He’s doing this for him.

He dropped the match in the gasoline. He made the pyre. This fire is all his.

Over and over in his mind, he replays the stunned image of Ry standing there as Lana lay by him, incapacitated by an stun bolt that he’d shot. That he’d had to feign was intended for Ry.

He wasn’t wearing his helmet when Theron aimed. He’d clipped it to his belt, and Theron desperately wished Ry had it on. His calm fractured like brittle ice on a lake - his ears flattening back, and then falling, the furrow in his brows, disbelief and heartbreak writ clearly on his face clear as day, and wide-eyed as his breath caught. 

Ry was not a stranger to betrayal - neither of them were; they’d stayed up many a late sleepless night confiding in each other their pasts. It was those times he’d realised the life of a Sith and an SIS agent were perhaps more similar than he would’ve expected. But none of the people who’d stabbed him in the back had ever gotten close to him as Theron had. He was Ry’s one lapse.

And barely a grade above a whisper, he’d breathed his name.

_“... Theron?”_

He's so sorry. _He's so fucking sorry._ And he can't tell him it’s not real and he doesn’t mean any of this. He has to make him believe he meant what he said, all those untruths. He gasps for breath in between the broken apologies, that no one will hear except him, trembling. Never has he felt so small. Never has he loathed or despised himself as much as he does now. There’s been many times he’s hated his own guts but this. This might be an all new low. And he deserves this hate. He deserves it.

He vows, if he ever lives through this, finally stops Atrius and Gemini 16 so The Order can’t hurt anyone else anymore, he'll throw himself before him for forgiveness. He doesn’t deserve it. But how else is he going to live with himself if he makes it out alive?

For holding him at gunpoint. For telling him he loved him. For leaving him there on Umbara. For taking his heart and promising him things Theron believed so sure and truly that he could keep.

And for breaking them.

He stays there, in the pilot seat, as the vastness of hyperspace streaks by in the viewport, the only witness to his sorrow, and sobs.

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure if it's gonna stay canon for my verse, (god does it do Theron's character a MASSIVE disservice when I think about it hard for more than five seconds) but nonetheless I do enjoy the angst potential as an AU. Took the liberty of establishing some differences in worldstate bc canon is just my sandbox and I throw out everything that I don't vibe with. :3


End file.
